


Dendron

by ColdNeon



Category: Katawa Shoujo
Genre: Angst, F/M, Oddly ordered events, Original Character Death(s), but with some fluffy bits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 19:26:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4799444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColdNeon/pseuds/ColdNeon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Hisao and Emi come to the same conclusions about their relationship and come out stronger for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dendron

**Author's Note:**

> Worst description I've ever written. No other way to put it though, wrote this whilst listening to Dendron by The Hotelier on a loop: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyj06wPIHYQ

_You cut your ties,_  
_felt better off._  
_Salutations to your son._

Those first few weeks had been rough. The transition to Yamaku was one that left Hisao feeling at a distance with everything around him. But as he started to meld into the day to day of school, the crushing distance that he’d felt ever since his heart attack start to shut down a little bit. It wasn't until one day when Hisao was sitting on the roof with Emi and Rin, he felt warm. It wasn’t until that night that he realised just how long it had been since he’d felt warm inside and content.

_Awoke to find you heading out  
with your white collar undone._

One late night, Rin dragged the pair up onto the roof of the school, her eyes filled with a powerful determination. She had apparently been looking for inspiration for a new piece and wanted the two to keep her company while she broke curfew. Emi and Hisao had talked for hours to keep the cold out before dozing off in the fresh night air. The soft strokes and scratchings of Rin’s brush were almost hypnotising to the ears. As the morning sun brushed the roof, Hisao’s eyes cracked open to see Emi stroking her dress and pulling him to the exit with her white collar popped and messy from the rough sleeping on the roof.

_You placed a bar,  
I played a game to see how low that I could go._

Some days it felt like she was testing his patience on the track. Hisao would run faster and longer than he had before and would for a few moments be happy about it, but then Emi would be there, gleefully teasing him as she breezed past. Even on the days she took it easier, he found himself starting to challenge himself without her teasing prods and jabs. It was odd, but almost comforting in a way, cementing their friendship further than he’d ever expected.

_We develop mental pictures  
and we’re following our fathers down the drain._

She sometimes found herself wondering what her father would think of her constant push for success. Would he have helped guide her down the narrow path, helping her balance when she started to lose her way, or would he have held her back? It was at these times that she found herself clinging onto her routines with Hisao a bit more. With pictures of her father in mind, she ran harder and faster, with the memory of him fading a little more with every kilometre she ran. It felt like every step dragged her a little further away from him, and she hated it.

 _Do you recall the imagery from when I drove you away?_  
_Through others’ rose prescription lens,_  
_man I’m sorry every day._

She saw red that day. When she saw her mother talking to Hisao unashamedly, blabbing about everything she’d worked so hard to keep from him, it broke something. The venom she spat while he stood there might have been unnecessary. She didn’t need him to be her hero, but maybe she’d gone a little overboard. It was cold and after he left, she ran to her room, her heart aching. In the days that followed, she wanted to apologise, but every time she tried, the harshness filled her once more and she turned away and did what she did best. Ran.

_because we intersect internally  
and then we take what we have and we run._

From that first day that they collided in the hallways, it was almost like their baggage was there. Emi with the stories she wouldn’t tell and Hisao, with his struggle for freedom from his illness. But as they ran around that track, faster with every week, those problems got a little further away. It wasn’t a solution but for the pair it gave them a little more ground to stand on.

_and It all starts to unravel  
until we’re less than we were carrying before._

When she took him to her father’s grave, a million thoughts ran through her head. Never before had she been able to do it and she wasn’t sure what was pushing her to do it today. Every thread and aspect of her wanted to run, keep running until she never saw him again, but she bolted that fear down. And so she told him all the things she’d been holding back, all the things she’d trusted herself to never let free. There was an touch of lightness when she left the graveyard, and she realised just how long it’d been since she opened up to someone else.

_I guess I expected more._

When she spat at him to leave, it cut deep. Because deep down he’d known that prying would cause her to reject him, like it had every time before that day. What made it worse than any of the times she’d brushed him off, any of the times she’d changed the subject, was the fact that when he  looked at her hurt eyes, they spoke to him. _”I guess I expected more of you.”_ It was that utter betrayal that haunted him as he walked out the house and down the street. Hisao had never felt more like a failure.

 _Wake me up._  
_Pictures of you smiling in times_  
_when I just couldn’t be around._

There a small snap of the lens as Hisao took a photo of Emi lying quietly beside him on the bed, a goofy smile plastered on her face. She reached out and grabbed the camera, quickly checking the photo. “I hope you aren’t taking any pervy pictures, Hisao,” she laughed as she tossed him the camera back and he shook his head. “Just want to always have a picture of you for when I can’t see you.” Her eyes misted and she rolled over.

 _Hold me up._  
_Count my rings to see how many winters_  
_I’ve been stuck here under ground._

She always knew how many days it’d been since her accident. It didn’t bother her, but whenever she started the day by putting on her legs, it was there. When she took them off at night, it was there. It was like a persistent winter in her chest that she could never really shake. It was just there.

 _Swore I’d not burn out._  
_Digging through the memories_  
_that made you feel alive when you were young._

When he was little he’d always had dreams of being something big, but after the accident he’d felt those dreams out of reach. But when he ran around the track with her every day and heard her talk brightly about her upcoming track meets and see just how free she looked when he ran, he felt something more. He felt a burning in his chest, and not the kind that would have him in a screaming panic on a normal day. He felt a little more free. 

 _You were right to doubt._  
_Broken since foundations_  
_in the structures you were building came undone._

After that day at the grave, Hisao realised just how hard it had been for the girl he loved to be so open to him. She was such a proud fighter, brave to the point of ridiculousness, that she would rather internalise everything and keep herself alienated then to let herself be open to more pain. And when you’ve lost one of the closest people in the world to you, could anyone really expected anything else?

 _Part of your charm was_  
_the way you would push me from_  
_all of the traps that I just couldn’t see._

In later years, he would admit that Emi pushing him away had probably drawn him in closer than anything. Even with all her warnings and red flags, his stupid blundering had made him fall more in love with her, charmed by the unobtainable. It’s what made nearly losing her hurt so much more.

 _Figures the one that was there to_  
_have tripped you up_  
_would be the one_  
_that was set there_  
_by me._

She always knew that she would be the one to end things between them, but she’d never really wanted it to end. She just wanted that peacefulness to go on, when it was just the two of them being intimate but not being lovers. The jokes, the stupidity, the goofing off. It could have gone on so much longer if he'd let it. But he didn't. So in the end when she finally threw him away, she felt the snap, and it hurt.

_Wish I was there to say goodbye when you went away._

He watched her once while they were split up, from a distance. He really just wanted to say goodbye, but he was so scared of the ending that he couldn’t bring himself to confront it. He’d expected more of himself, but maybe that’s who he was.

_Wish I was home but noplace was there._

When Hisao was alone in the aftermath of their crumbling relationship, he didn’t have anywhere to go. He drifted through the hallways, sullenly greeting his classmates, studying alone in his room and running till his lungs burned and his heart hammered violently in his chest. It hurt, but not as much as losing her.

_I cut off my arm at the bone in solidarity._

When Emi’s prosthetics had to be taken off, she took it pretty hard. One day, in an attempt to cheer her up, Hisao hijacked one of the spare wheelchairs that were lying around and rode it up to her room to challenge her to a race. He lost horribly when she rear ended his chair and knocked him sprawling into Rin’s doorway. It was worth it for the smile she gave him.

_Capital teaches that there’s less when you share._

Sharing was a weakness. Her dad had been the one she trusted and he’d been ripped away from her, so she sure as hell wasn’t going to open up to this boy. There was less risk if she held him at arm’s length and kept it safe. That way when things ended, it wouldn’t be too hard to move on and get away.

_I felt the noose tighten up on your collar bone.  
I felt the gun in the small of your back._

When she first saw him, there was an emptiness in his eyes. Hisao had the eyes of someone who’d given up and someone within her wanted to see what those eyes looked like when they were lit up with something other than hopelessness.

 _Engraved in the stone_  
_by request and recurse of friends dead is_  
_“Tell me again that it’s all in my head.”_

Hisao looked at that stone that they had visited every year since that day.  It had worn a bit since then but the engraving was still very readable. He glanced at his wife, in all her beauty and sadly smiled. There were tears running down her face as she placed the first set of flowers down upon her father’s grave. Her fingernails gritted tightly into his hand as she sobbed and he held her against him, quietly placing down his set of flowers on the fresher of the graves. He’d never try to accelerate Emi’s grieving but he could always be there and he would always do his best.


End file.
